


Less bitter, and so much lighter

by Anihan (Nakagami)



Series: A series of AUs. [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 00:08:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakagami/pseuds/Anihan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John goes to the country to rest before heading back to London. There he meets a faun and together they encounters language barriers.<br/>And snuggle, because people in my AU are happy. </p><p>This is a fairy tale (b)romance. </p><p>[Concrit and comments welcome. If you're willing to spark up a dialogue, even better.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Less bitter, and so much lighter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyCardinal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyCardinal/gifts), [Blue_Eyes (Niisama_Nakagami)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Blue_Eyes+%28Niisama_Nakagami%29).



In a happier time and a gentler place, John Watson chased a dog named Mike into the woods. This was the third step in meeting a quieter and gentler Holmes family.

The second step was being sent away to heal.

The first step was being shot.

~*~

Mrs. Stamford opened the blinds above the kitchen sink and swore. “Oh, piffle! The dog’s out again.”

John glanced up from his breakfast of lovingly-made eggs and toast, pausing for one critical moment. Then he burst into motion and shoved the rest of the concoction into his mouth and quickly dumped the dishes in the sink, rushing to the door before his host mother could say anything against it.

 “I’m sorry, must’ve left the gate open! I’ve got it, Missus Stamford!”

John’s feet were in shoes and the shoes were on the pebbled path leading from the door to the main road before Mrs. Stamford could stop him.

She called after the boy anyway, laughing, “Mike’s fine, but go ahead and try! He’ll come home by nightfall if you can’t catch him, and I expect you home by then, too, if you want dinner!”

John waved. His gait was a bit lopsided, but at least he was having fun. 

“Not that you can hear me, mind,” Mrs. Stamford said to the empty yard. She chuckled to herself. “But it is good to have company again. They always get so lonely out there.”

You know the format of legends, don't you? When you chase a cat it leads you to a white rabbit, and you chase that rabbit down a hole, or when you chase a falling star, or chase the last page in a book, or the end of a dream… It didn’t matter. Someday you will catch it, and the journey there is always most unexpected.

~*~

The not-animal came closer, staring at John just as assuredly as John gaped back. There wasn’t a second in which either one of them spent time wondering if they were afraid. There was no question.

Sherlock was terrified. This was a thousand metres of uninterrupted deer trails. This was a sunny day with a hint of rain in the air. This was a new book delivered to him by an animal careful enough to not damage a single page. This was a fantasy come to life, a living human upon his metaphorical doorstep, and the human was unarmed, mild-mannered, and still.  

That was the best part. The human stayed still, allowing himself – or at least, it certainly appeared male – to be observed and catalogued, and Sherlock approached cautiously, unwilling to scare it off. When they were less than a metre apart, Sherlock reached out with a hand to touch its shoulder.

It flinched away.

Mortified, Sherlock pulled back. The human didn’t appear too contemptuous of his approach, so he resolved to try again. Kneeling first, judging the danger to his person to be minimal, Sherlock reached forward to touch the human’s knee. His fingers met denim. This time, the human let him get his fill of exploration.

His deft hands explored bone, muscle, pant-leg, and the curious contraption that immobilized his patella, allowing the knee to heal without too much undue stress. The human didn’t question or move away except for when he prodded too fully and the human flinched, obviously experiencing some lingering discomfort. Sherlock looked and fondled and absorbed what he could from the body part he was being offered, and then he looked up at John’s face for the first time since had touched him.

The human was smiling. Relief more potent than thunder shook Sherlock through to his core.

“Hello,” said the human. “I’m John. And you are?”

A powerful tremor had begun inside Sherlock. It worked its way to his extremities and Sherlock had to look away, look down and press his forehead against the thigh just above the contraption holding _John_ ’s knee in place.

“Hey,” John said softly, “hey now, none of that. Are you all right? I’m going to touch you now so don’t be frightened. There, see? You’re fine. You’re not alone.” John wove his fingers into the hair between Sherlock’s antlers, caressing his skull soothingly and saying a few nonsense words between the meaningless comforting phrases.

You see, Sherlock knew they were meaningless. John had no proof to back up his claims that ‘everything would be fine’ and ‘it will all be okay’, absolutely none.

Still. Sherlock closed his eyes and allowed the human to embrace him with those words. Even without proof, John’s words made the world bearable.

“I’ll take care of you,” John said at last, intermixed with the nonsense and useless promises, and Sherlock was shocked into stillness. A promise. John was promising to—Did he mean it? Did he truly intend to, what, _adopt_ Sherlock? And if he did, _how?_ It was unfathomable.

“Shhh,” John crooned. He knelt at last and pulled Sherlock close with one arm, transferring the taller man’s face from John’s thigh to his injured shoulder. It was a hug of sorts, and Sherlock melted into it. The shoulder smelled of rawness and returning-health, but even that tinge of once-sickness and new blood was comforting. A healing wound meant that the human was alive. And having John alive meant… Sherlock didn’t finish the thought.

“It’s okay,” John whispered into his hair. His lips brushed an antler tine but he hardly noticed, even if Sherlock couldn’t not notice.  “I’ve got you.”

Please, Sherlock prayed. Let John fulfill that promise.

~*~

“Wow. Um. This is certainly a… an esoteric collection.”

Sherlock looked horrified. He rushed about for a moment, cleaning it up by shoving things deeper into corners and niches in the bark of random trees around the clearing.

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that! It’s fine. Really.” John smiled up at him. “It’s all fine. Human or not, tidy or not. All of it.”

He did look nervously at the skull before leaving, though.

~*~

John lay on his side, curled in a hollow at the base of a particularly large tree. Sherlock lay across John’s feet and legs with his face pressed into John’s jumper over his illiac’s crest. His antlers were getting unwieldy but the two of them adjusted until both were comfortable.

John read aloud until his voice was hoarse and his throat was sore, and in the silence that lapsed Sherlock spoke to him in his milk tongue, although John couldn’t understand a word.

Both of them had difficulty speaking the other’s language even after a month of trying. Sherlock was too embarrassed to have John hear while he was bad at it, but John was utterly useless at trying Sherlock’s mother tongue. They gave up for a bit and focused on written words.

It was less than a week before Sherlock could write, and he began with full sentences flowing from one of John’s (well, one of Mrs. Stamford’s) spare ballpoints.

~*~

 _So what are you?_ _I've never heard of a creature like you before._

_I am a quite singular individual, true, but I am not the only one of my species to encounter humans. However, I am unaware of the term for my kind in English. You are my first English-speaking companion. I have been called a faun once before._

John snorted. He turned the paper back to him so that he could write a reply.

_I don't believe it. You're not like fauns at all._

Sherlock read the claim with a snort of laughter and looked pointedly down at himself; furred in all the right places, and faintly hairy everywhere else, possessing delicate autumnal markings across his chest and thighs, and with the presence of bony protrusions from the skull? John shook his head and wrote quickly before Sherlock could reply with something caustic.

_Well no, I didn't mean like that. Your physical appearance is kind of close, if a faun was half moose, maybe._

Sherlock looked surprised at this. He also looked a bit nervous. When John continued writing as if he weren't serious about his accusation of mixed parentage, Sherlock's hackles settled and the tension left his shoulders. Either John had no idea or he just didn't care. Sherlock wasn't going to push the issue.

_But no, as it is, I can't believe it. Look at you! Fauns are half-goat, half-man womanizers! I've never even heard you talk about a woman. Well, unless she was dead, a witness, or a suspect._

Sherlock thought about that. He glanced at John out of the corner of his eye, weighing his options. So far they had communicated in only written form, as Sherlock could read English well and John couldn't produce the syllables of the faunal language.

But then Sherlock shrugged proverbially: why the fuck not? He didn't bother with clearing his throat to announce his intentions first. "The day we met, I spoke of my mother."

John's face said everything in that moment: Holy fuck!

~*~

After confirming that yes, Sherlock was a quick study, and proving that thirteen days was ample time to learn to speak rudimentary English once already comfortable with the written form, John sat back and laughed.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I am overjoyed that you find my learning capabilities laughable.”

“I’m just glad I could teach you anything. Christ, it was bad sometimes! You did body language so well half the time I wondered if you were having me on a bit—yes, just like that! Who taught you to snort derisively? I swear, it’s right out of a book.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. It _was_ right out of a book he had read, but he wasn’t going to tell John that. Not yet, at least.

“Or a movie. No, a fairy tale!” John laughed again, practically shaking with it. He sobered quickly, coughing to hide his lingering amusement. “Ah, I mean, sorry. Ta for the laugh and all but I didn’t mean to take it that far. I, well. Well.”

John looked down.

Then, just as suddenly, he looked back up. “Wait, we didn’t begin passing notes until the second week. And you’d never spoken to me before then. Not aloud, I mean.”

Shit. Sherlock raised his eyebrows in a perfect caricature of disinterested surprise. “That so,” he said, carefully blank. But John wasn’t to be fooled a second time.

“Yes, must have been. That’s when I went back to gather my stuff, move in properly. So when did you tell me about your mother?”

In any other man, moose, or faun, this question likely would have prompted some amount of stuttering, or perhaps the avoidance of eye contact combined with aversive glances toward a nearby escape route. But because this man, moose, faun was a Holmes, he played it off with a cool proverbial shrug, equated in the cocking of a single eyebrow, and spoke nonchalantly over his shoulder, “When you met my brother. Surely you can’t have forgotten already? It’s only been six weeks: Any creature that large and rapacious must have made an impression on your nose at least, if not your visual memory.”

John couldn’t help it. That set him off again.

He clasped a hand to his belly and laughed longer and harder than before, holding the stitch in his side in order to keep himself from reaching out to grab and hug the strange creature he’d found in front of himself, the first one to make him feel alive since his injury.

Sherlock huffed. “I fail to see what in my statements has been so hilarious.”

“That’s exactly it!” John crowed.

“I do not follow,” Sherlock snapped. (His teeth clicked sharply to punctuate his words. John sobered a little. That mouth could take off a finger easily.)

“It’s circumstantial. You’ve been speaking for all of half an hour now, and you’re using words I don’t even _read_ on a regular basis, much less use!” He chuckled again, but the snickers had died down now. He merely smiled over at his forest-dwelling friend. “I’m supposed to be the professional here, but you’re just… amazing. Truly wonderful.”

Sherlock wanted to scoff and say, “Do you even hear yourself?” but he didn’t. He couldn’t trivialize such an admission at this point. He shuffled a bit, then slid closer to the human until their sides touched. “Is that what you see when you see me?”

“Yes. I laugh because it is amazing. Everything you do, everything you—just, just everything.”

“Do you see yourself, too?” Sherlock asked, choosing his words carefully for their implications. “Because I have seen the same thing.”

John stared at him for a moment. He understood but… it took a minute for the realization to sink in. A slow smile etched its way deeply onto John’s face, and Sherlock was slow to match it; but eventually they sat there with shoulders, hips, and thighs pressed together, skulls apart so that they could look at each other and smile yet again. 


End file.
